Quotes about sunshine

A collection of quotes on the topic of sunshine, likeness, day, life.

Quotes about sunshine

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
Norman Vincent Peale photo
Alexander Pope photo
Walt Whitman photo

“Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

This has become attributed to both Walt Whitman and Helen Keller, but has not been found in either of their published works, and variations of the quote are listed as a proverb commonly used in both the US and Canada in A Dictionary of American Proverbs (1992), edited by Wolfgang Mieder, Kelsie B. Harder and Stewart A. Kingsbury.
Misattributed

Louisa May Alcott photo

“Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.”

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) American novelist

As quoted in Elbert Hubbard's Scrap Book (1923) by Elbert Hubbard, p. 62

George Orwell photo
Edmund Spenser photo
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot photo
Woodrow Wilson photo

“We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

As quoted by Thomas A. Bruno in Take your dreams and Run (South Plainfield: Bridge, 1984), p. 2-3. Source: Dr. Preston Williams (2002): By the Way - A Snapshot Diagnosis of the Inner-City Dilemma, p. 38-39. Xulun Press, Fairfax, Virginia http://books.google.de/books?id=Xn9jxqatFecC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=woodrow+wilson+We+Grow+Great+By+Dreams%27&source=bl&ots=TtioQ-yO0-&sig=qHWPj4-8g3hSjcV-qJTbzNg6nuI&hl=de&sa=X&ei=1QZ0U4DBOaf80QWSqYDQAw&ved=0CHYQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=woodrow%20wilson%20We%20Grow%20Great%20By%20Dreams'&f=false
1880s

Mark Twain photo

“He was sunshine most always-I mean he made it seem like good weather.”

Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Anne Frank photo

“As long as this exists, this sunshine and this cloudless sky, and as long as I can enjoy it, how can I be sad?”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

John Ruskin photo
William Shakespeare photo

“Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Source: The Complete Sonnets and Poems

Albert Schweitzer photo
Susan B. Anthony photo
Lois Lowry photo
Anne Frank photo
Laura Ingalls Wilder photo

“Some old-fashioned things like fresh air and sunshine are hard to beat. In our mad rush for progress and modern improvements let's be sure we take along with us all the old-fashioned things worth while.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957) American children's writer, diarist, and journalist

Source: A Family Collection: Life on the Farm and in the Country, Making a Home; the Ways of the World, a Woman's Role

Diogenes of Sinope photo

“When Alexander the Great addressed him with greetings, and asked if he wanted anything, Diogenes replied "Yes, stand a little out of my sunshine."”

Diogenes of Sinope (-404–-322 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy

From Plutarch, Alexander, 14. Cf. Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 38, Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, v. 32
Quoted by Plutarch

Romain Rolland photo

“It is the artist's business to create sunshine when the sun fails.”

Romain Rolland (1866–1944) French author

Part I
Jean-Christophe (1904 - 1912), Jean-Christophe à Paris: The Market-Place (1908)

Bill Murray photo

“This isn't the old Mister Sunshine.”

Bill Murray (1950) American actor and comedian

The Razor's Edge (1984)

Albert Schweitzer photo

“Most men are scantily nourished on a modicum of happiness and a number of empty thoughts which life lays on their plates. They are kept in the road of life through stern necessity by elemental duties which they cannot avoid.
Again and again their will-to-live becomes, as it were, intoxicated: spring sunshine, opening flowers, moving clouds, waving fields of grain — all affect it. The manifold will-to-live, which is known to us in the splendid phenomena in which it clothes itself, grasps at their personal wills. They would fain join their shouts to the mighty symphony which is proceeding all around them. The world seem beauteous…but the intoxication passes. Dreadful discords only allow them to hear a confused noise, as before, where they had thought to catch the strains of glorious music. The beauty of nature is obscured by the suffering which they discover in every direction. And now they see again that they are driven about like shipwrecked persons on the waste of ocean, only that the boat is at one moment lifted high on the crest of the waves and a moment later sinks deep into the trough; and that now sunshine and now darkening clouds lie on the surface of the water.
And now they would fain persuade themselves that land lies on the horizon toward which they are driven. Their will-to-live befools their intellect so that it makes efforts to see the world as it would like to see it. It forces this intellect to show them a map which lends support to their hope of land. Once again they essay to reach the shore, until finally their arms sink exhausted for the last time and their eyes rove desperately from wave to wave. …
Thus it is with the will-to-live when it is unreflective.
But is there no way out of this dilemma? Must we either drift aimlessly through lack of reflection or sink in pessimism as the result of reflection? No. We must indeed attempt the limitless ocean, but we may set our sails and steer a determined course.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 256

Tomas Tranströmer photo
Robbie Williams photo

“The world could change in a second,
so I find the sunshine beckons me,
to open up the gate and dream.”

Robbie Williams (1974) British singer and entertainer

Lazy Days
Life Thru a Lens (1997)

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada photo
Edgar Allan Poe photo
Friedrich Hölderlin photo
Nelson Mandela photo

“I always knew that someday I would once again feel the grass under my feet and walk in the sunshine as a free man.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)

Common (rapper) photo

“Granted we known each other for some time
but it don't take a whole day to recognize sunshine”

Common (rapper) (1972) American rapper, actor and author from Illinois

"The Light" (Track 7)
Albums, Like Water for Chocolate (2000)

Albert Schweitzer photo
Charles Mackay photo

“But the sunshine aye shall light the sky,
As round and round we run;
And the truth shall ever come uppermost,
And justice shall be done.”

Charles Mackay (1814–1889) British writer

"Eternal Justice", Stanza 4
Legends of the Isles and Other Poems (1851)
Context: They may veil their eyes, but they cannot hide
The sun’s meridian glow;
The heel of a priest may tread thee down,
And a tyrant work thee woe:
But never a truth has been destroyed;
They may curse it, and call it crime;
Pervert and betray, or slander and slay
Its teachers for a time.
But the sunshine aye shall light the sky,
As round and round we run;
And the truth shall ever come uppermost,
And justice shall be done.

Stephen King photo
Henry Miller photo
George Lincoln Rockwell photo
Helen Keller photo

“Keep yourself to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist
Karen Marie Moning photo
Joseph Addison photo

“What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

This appears as an anonymous proverb in Frank Leslie's Sunday Magazine Vol. XIII, (January - June 1883) edited by T. De Witt Talmage, and apparently only in recent years has it become attributed to Addison.
Disputed

John Muir photo
Alexander Pope photo
Steve Martin photo

“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer
Ulysses S. Grant photo
Hans Christian Andersen photo

“Just living is not enough," said the butterfly, "one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.”

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet

Source: The Complete Fairy Tales

F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Richelle Mead photo

“You might be surrounded by clouds, but you'll be like sunshine to me.”

Variant: Don't worry, little dhampir. You might be surrounded by clouds, but you'll always be like sunshine to me.
Source: Shadow Kiss

Gustave Flaubert photo
Victor Hugo photo
Henry Miller photo

“I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.”

Source: Tropic of Cancer (1934), Chapter Four, Pappin
Context: I am a free man-and I need my freedom. I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion. I need sunshine and paving tones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself with only the music of my heart for company. What do you want of me? When I have something to say, I put it in print. When I have something to give, I give it. Your prying curiosity turns my stomach! Your compliments humiliate me. Your tea poisons me! I owe nothing to anyone, I would've responsible to God alone-if he exited!

Glenn Beck photo

“If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine.”

Morris West (1916–1999) Australian writer

Source: The Clowns of God (1981), Ch. II (ellipses in original) <!-- p. 35 -->
This statement begins with a quotation from Horace, Odes, Book I, Ode ix, line 13.
Context: "Forbear to ask what tomorrow may bring" … If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine.

Victor Hugo photo

“Laughter is sunshine, it chases winter from the human face.”

Variant: A smile is the same as sunshine; it banishes winter from the human countenance.
Source: Les Misérables

Louisa May Alcott photo
H. Jackson Brown, Jr. photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
William Makepeace Thackeray photo

“A good laugh is sunshine in a house”

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) novelist

Variant: A good laugh is a sunshine in a house.

Karen Marie Moning photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Elbert Hubbard photo
Anne Brontë photo
Jenny Han photo
Christopher Marlowe photo
Richelle Mead photo

“Sunshine had never tasted so sweet as it did at that moment.”

Source: Frostbite

George Bernard Shaw photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Karen Marie Moning photo
Nathaniel Hawthorne photo

“I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

1842
Source: Notebooks, The American Notebooks (1835 - 1853)

Debbie Macomber photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
O. Henry photo

“He seemed to be made of sunshine and blood-red tissue and clear weather.”

O. Henry (1862–1910) American short story writer

Source: Selected Stories

Walt Whitman photo
Scott Lynch photo
Nathaniel Hawthorne photo
Drew Barrymore photo

“Daisies are like sunshine to the ground.”

Drew Barrymore (1975) American actress, director and producer
Billy Graham photo
Frances Hodgson Burnett photo
Rick Riordan photo

“You, sir, are a ray of sunshine.
-Percy Jackson”

Source: The Mark of Athena

Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Louisa May Alcott photo
Elizabeth Gilbert photo

“I crossed the street to walk in the sunshine.”

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Hendrik Werkman photo

“Last Sunday we made a bicycle tour of 80 km. Through the North along the edge of the province [Groningen].... On such a day I get again a lot of impressions which will reappear in altered forms in due time. Beautiful landscapes, nice small roads, beautiful farms, meadows with horses and cattle, birds, water and a lot of sunshine. Mills and towers and trees are breaking the lines of the flat land..”

Hendrik Werkman (1882–1945) Dutch artist

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van Hendrik Werkman, in het Nederlands): Zondag maakten we een fietstocht van 80 km. Door het Noorden langs de rand van de provincie [Groningen].. .Op zoo’n dag doe ik weer heel wat indrukken op die te gelegener tijd omgewerkt weer tevoorschijn komen. Mooie landschappen, aardige weggetjes, prachtige boerderijen, weiden met paarden en vee, vogels, water en zonneschijn volop. Molens en torens en boomen breken de lijnen van het vlakke land..
In a letter to Henkels, 12 July 1944; as cited in H. N. Werkman - Leven & Werk - 1882-1945, ed. A. de Vries, J. van der Spek, D. Sijens, M. Jansen; WBooks, Groninger Museum / Stichting Werkman, 2015 (transl: Fons Heijnsbroek), p. 18
1940's

Hubert H. Humphrey photo
Nathaniel Hawthorne photo
Henry Adams photo

“His aunt drily remarked that, at this rate, he would soon get through all the sights; but she could not guess — having lived always in Washington — how little the sights of Washington had to do with its interest.

The boy could not have told her; he was nowhere near an understanding of himself. The more he was educated, the less he understood. Slavery struck him in the face; it was a nightmare; a horror; a crime; the sum of all wickedness! Contact made it only more repulsive. He wanted to escape, like the negroes, to free soil. Slave States were dirty, unkempt, poverty-stricken, ignorant, vicious! He had not a thought but repulsion for it; and yet the picture had another side. The May sunshine and shadow had something to do with it; the thickness of foliage and the heavy smells had more; the sense of atmosphere, almost new, had perhaps as much again; and the brooding indolence of a warm climate and a negro population hung in the atmosphere heavier than the catalpas. The impression was not simple, but the boy liked it: distinctly it remained on his mind as an attraction, almost obscuring Quincy itself. The want of barriers, of pavements, of forms; the looseness, the laziness; the indolent Southern drawl; the pigs in the streets; the negro babies and their mothers with bandanas; the freedom, openness, swagger, of nature and man, soothed his Johnson blood.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Joseph Goebbels photo

“1927. I stood in front of your grave; in radiating sunshine there was a still, green mound. And it was preaching about mortality.
My answer was: resurrection.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

1927. Ich stand an deinem Grab; im glastenden Sonnenschein lag ein stiller, grüner Hügel. Und predigte Vergänglichkeit.
Meine Antwort war: Auferstehung.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Halldór Laxness photo
Paul Simon photo

“Locked in a struggle for the right combination
Of words in a melody line,
I took a walk along the riverbank of my imagination.
Golden clouds were shuffling the sunshine.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Everything About It Is a Love Song
Song lyrics, Surprise (2006)